Poetic Dreams (for Poems)!

Unable to meet their demands during the daytime
Poems, they come haunting in my dreams
Disguising sometimes as my beloved
Sometimes as sworn enemies
And sometimes, bringing caskets full of flowers
Found only in Manipur, like girls going to temple

I know my beloved she doesn’t languor in the night
Yes, except when my bouts demand her comfort
Neither has she got any liking for flowers and temples;
Perfect and in her brutal best, lassoing
My unstable heart; she knows the innocent flowers
And blind Gods in the temple, they can’t see a fiend in me

I also know my enemies, numerous though;
They have their own businesses, devising and
Laying traps for me to fall in, but
They never dare trespass my dreams,
May be they are afraid of my pillow-knife
That I ordered from Japan.

And the flowers, those lovely flowers
I only pretend I forgot the bloom
That brings me wet fragrance after each rainfall
And the droplets of water falling unwillingly
From the leaves, in the whips of winds
Like inconsolable tears of parting lovers
After each meeting

But the poems, I find them rather amusing
Staying awake, up in the late night
When the whole world is asleep,
Seeking an easy prey in me, while during daylight
They play hide and seek, with their furry words
And in the night, they seek their poetic dreams
Wearing masks borrowed from everywhere

To the Serpent!

Living by the daylight of lecherous dreams
The serpent tried not to hiss. Yet its fang, all pronged
And dripped in convenient sarcasms on the epiphany
Of being raised a fortunate parasite, with unsound claims,
The serpent, hissed again, in its favourite tune
Finding an easy target for its fangs, in my walking feet!
But I wouldn’t die in haste; for dying,
It’s all in my blood, ever since I was borne an eclipsed soul
With a body wrought from promiscuous coffins.
I wouldn’t die; no matter how ruthless the jeers are
For I have lived weaning this body
With venoms milked from the agony of living!

Kids in Graves!

It is unusual for this to happen to me. I thought thus.
After all, I was born there, in the wilderness, in my paradise
In distinct symphony with nature; in my profitable ways,
The morning dew in the feet, the sound of streams
In the classroom, winds stalking sugar-cane leaves
And vanishing with a promise to come back
And of course chirpy girls, like sparrows, chirping about me,
How do I see red in their cheeks and pink in their smiles!

Then, how is this vacuum in my heart? No, this isn’t a paradise.
This is a mound, a vacuum inside and my body in it. No,
This isn’t the paradise that I saw. Or, am I in having another incarnation
Or, in another paradise? I doubt that too! There ain’t no bird.
Paradise, in my wilderness, they have birds and trees. Yea, may be
The kids, they might have taken all the joys out of here.

No title

Unable to sleep, with my unwritten poems swimming in my head
And waiting for my body to succumbed, I waited for someone
To give me company, and came Thangjam Ibopishak,
With one his innocuous poems, about a lucky blouse
And his poems; all proud and ready to confess...
Why he chose his wife’s chest to write in poems
And why he can’t buy a decent cloth for her!

He said, ‘Very soon, his poems will be in market.’ And
He left in hurry leaving me an advice, ‘Don’t write poems. Instead,
Carve statues of woman. They sell in good price.’
With my marriage looming, I am thinking of my nights
And my wife, with her chest all smeared with inks!
No, I don’t know how she will like it. But for Ibopishak,
And his advice, I think, he is right, at least to me.
And I know nothing, except writing poetry.
Pity on her!

The Truth!

They said: ‘It’s the blaring truth,
Of the time.’ I said: ‘No, it’s the mute truth, of our time.’
Then he said: ‘You both are wrong. There is no truth, at all!’

Thus, the eternal argument continues. Me taking
Many a avatars, like incarnations with my own truth;
They waiting for me to arrive, every time the flood recedes
And He, ever present like the truth itself, but doing nothing.

Then, we erect a pole of truth, and a flag atop
With questions scribbled on truth, about
His non-existent truth, my mute truth and
Their blaring truth! We all wait for the flag
To talk, in the wind and spread our message
Of truth and gather the majority. But it never fluttered,
It never fluttered for the truth.

The Misreading (of Time)!

As a result of a continuous living,
I have learnt the misreading of time
It has indeed helped me understand
The vulgar it carries with the living,
And the breezy lies of time
And the moments that carry the tinged hope
Of bequeathed lives!

But as the misreading goes
Without any comma or semi colon,
This living becomes a thick morass
Of seconds and minutes;
Chiming against the rim of faith,
Just like the time ticking and ticking
Inside the wretched watch of memory
And sometimes swirling inside my body,
The clock that doesn’t tick!

This misreading, with time
Reminds me my brutal romance
With her words
With her ludic expressions;
The nun that she was
Knew how to caress a reflection
Like my own writings
In my heart’s parchment
In colours, garnished like never before
And the texture of her skin
In intimate consummation
It seethed in imperial lust
Seeing my narcissism!

Yes, with time
I have misread her lines
Unable to satisfy the appetites
Whetted by time.

But at times
This misreading
It’s like an idyllic dream:
My poems falling
On the tin top, clattering
Dripping with words
In some monsoon night
And me
Holding back to myself
Watching her play with raindrops!

No,
It’s only a living.
But it seems
I have gone too far with time
Waiting for that patrician whore
Who once brought me life
Every morning!

To the Shirt!

Oh! My shirt,
Lovely you! Posing as me
In this season of fake,
Giving me an identity
And representing me wherever I go about
And humming in their tunes!

Oh! My shirt,
You allow me to live this life
Like never before
In this season of tardiness
Playing my own body
Like a poor man’s cruse
Empty though, yet fill with pride.

Oh! My shirt,
I have no qualms living like this
Carrying you, instead of my body;
In fact, my body
It befits a décor for borrowed coffins,
From some crafty carpenter
Ready to be buried
Without the parting ceremony!

Yet my dear shirt,
Bring me the finest of robs
I want to walk these fine roads
For one last time, in your garb
In the finest grandeur,
So bring me the best of your robes.
Don’t you know:
They all come in their finest attire
Silky smooth shiny clothes,
So that they call me their friend;
I am tired of this isolation,
Hiding, wearing only you
Like my own skin
They even said, I stink
But you don’t know, that’s not me
They were talking about
It’s you, in your fetish for this body
Tell me what’s it in this body
That you can’t let go,
No, don’t say you can’t shed me my skin!

Still-death!

I was miserable
That’s how I saw myself
Walking through these graves

I carry with myself burdens of deprivation
Seeking poems of happier times
In recollection, in remembrance
Of happier times, when
The streets echoed with poems of abundance
But this deprivation that
I harvested for myself
It carried me afar, far from my home
In the unknown streets
Leading to the graves

I looked miserable
Walking naked in those graves
With flakes of poems
But the questions that I asked
‘On my anguish’;
The streets and graves
They responded rather clumsy.
They said: ‘I am still-death!’

Poem for a Missing Person!

My mother, she is a matric-fail
But she reads newspapers well, every morning
Before we could wake up and disturb her
With our petty demands for a day to start!

She reads it for us, picking news of killing
Helping us digest the scores of missing
Sentence to sentence, word by word
For names and organizations
Like her favourite weaving threads
With twisted threads ready to warp and weft,
Entwined between her seasoned fingers
For her favourite fanek
And mapping it like a plain we could live in.

Shredded and torn, that’s how we find the newspapers
Each morning, and she would read aloud
Audible enough to the entire locality,
The moment we scratched through the remains.
Bemused, we brothers and my little sister
Would searched for our inventory of peoples killed
Or either missing, for yet another morning
Of listing, for the record!

Today morning, a got a called from my father
Saying, my mother went into hiding last night
After serving him the best of ngafak kangsoi,
With our inventory! My father’s worried.
He said, ‘my name is in the newspaper!’

Amnesia!

The sound reverberates
And the ambivalent response echoed
Through the myriad limbs, of the body
…Hearts, spine, ears and hairs;
The influence of existence
It embraces the qualms
To a mere provocation of desires
Like a dream beyond the shore
Compromising the wavy presumptions
Of this soulful heart;
And it dies quietly, die
An amnesia, in the sound
Of fictitious lines!

Questions on Life!

This morning, I woke up with a purpose
A purpose to live another day
To settle few scores with certain questions
With choicest answers
Learnt from last night’s nightmares!

Some questions,
They have become parts of me, to the self;
Like my own skin and other assortment of limbs
Carrying wherever I dare go, and
Leaving the odour of its eminence,
Off the shelf
Every time I move, carrying
These questions and the body
For answers
Even before I could asked myself
Even before I could identify myself!

Sometimes,
I think I am groping for answers
To the questions that I have never asked
Sometimes,
It looks like I am painting my dreams
Even before I could fall asleep
And at times,
I feel disgusted with myself
Even to think about my existence, and
The eminence it portrays
In shadows and its many glorified shades!

But the morning
In its many glories
Brought me strength
For a day to challenge myself
Asking questions on my being
And many forsaken truths
Like double headed riddles
That, for so long
I thought for excuses
In the grasp of life
With its many demands
Comfort, cosy dreams and
Cherries and blue nights!

These questions
Now they let me live
And I better not ask
Until I live my life
For all the truths that I seek
In questions for answers!

The Plight!

Initially, I thought
I was borne for the occasion
In celebration of life
No matter how I do look like
A clown, a tramp or anything
But,
Looking at the plight of these poems
I think
I am lucky
Even to fancy this look
Of varied misdemeanors within our struggle
Of a chorus
Though in tatters!
Unluckily for my poems
Their plight, I can’t grasp:
No one reads!

Are they that bad? Or
A lousy scream of few scattered words
In its many faces, some volte and some lewd;
Are they the worst form of reprisal
Like verbal tirade of soured dreams
Or like words conjoined like Siamese twins
For people to despise in heart
Yet pretending a heap of cheap similes?


Oh no!
You all seem to know me and my poems
Within its many dead incarnations,
The flirt of the dreamy town
With corrugated shilling of a beggar
And my poems, as they be read as my soul
I can only breathe them
Though the haze of lies and pretensions
Like such a poem and its easy price
In praises and contemplation!
But my poems
I swear, bleeds in your adorable flacks.